The human future depends upon the integrity of science. Those who threaten the integrity of science, threaten the human future.

… the climate scientific establishment repeatedly reacts as if nothing is wrong. It calls out any errors on the lukewarming end, but ignores those on the exaggeration end. That complacency has shocked me, and done more than anything else to weaken my long-standing support for science as an institution. __ http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/06/climate-wars-done-science/

Now, thanks largely to climate science… bad ideas can persist in science for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they can turn into intolerant dogmas.

This should have been obvious to me. Lysenkoism, a pseudo-biological theory that plants (and people) could be trained to change their heritable natures, helped starve millions and yet persisted for decades in the Soviet Union, reaching its zenith under Nikita Khrushchev…

… Scientists are just as prone as anybody else to “confirmation bias”, the tendency we all have to seek evidence that supports our favoured hypothesis and dismiss evidence that contradicts it—as if we were counsel for the defence. It’s tosh that scientists always try to disprove their own theories, as they sometimes claim, and nor should they. But they do try to disprove each other’s. Science has always been decentralised, so Professor Smith challenges Professor Jones’s claims, and that’s what keeps science honest.,,

In the 1970s, when global temperatures were cooling, some scientists could not resist the lure of press attention by arguing that a new ice age was imminent. Others called this nonsense and the World Meteorological Organisation rightly refused to endorse the alarm. That’s science working as it should. In the 1980s, as temperatures began to rise again, some of the same scientists dusted off the greenhouse effect and began to argue that runaway warming was now likely…

… inch by inch, the huge green pressure groups have grown fat on a diet of constant but ever-changing alarm about the future. That these alarms—over population growth, pesticides, rain forests, acid rain, ozone holes, sperm counts, genetically modified crops—have often proved wildly exaggerated does not matter: the organisations that did the most exaggeration trousered the most money. In the case of climate, the alarm is always in the distant future, so can never be debunked.

These huge green multinationals, with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, have now systematically infiltrated science, as well as industry and media, with the result that many high-profile climate scientists and the journalists who cover them have become one-sided cheerleaders for alarm, while a hit squad of increasingly vicious bloggers polices the debate to ensure that anybody who steps out of line is punished. They insist on stamping out all mention of the heresy that climate change might not be lethally dangerous.

Today’s climate science, as Ian Plimer points out in his chapter in The Facts, is based on a “pre-ordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored and analytical procedures are treated as evidence”. Funds are not available to investigate alternative theories. Those who express even the mildest doubts about dangerous climate change are ostracised, accused of being in the pay of fossil-fuel interests or starved of funds; those who take money from green pressure groups and make wildly exaggerated statements are showered with rewards and treated by the media as neutral…

Ridley’s entire article is much longer than the brief excerpt above, and is well worth reading in its entirety. He calls out several of the pseudoscience leaders and exposes a few of their many intentional lies.

It should be clear to any honest, informed, and intelligent person, that climate “science” is destroying the reputation of science as a whole. The question being posed here is:

“What should be done about this corrupt and dishonest branch of “science” (and its supporters in government, media, and culture) in order to save the integrity, good name, and usefulness of science as a whole?

Here at the Al Fin Institute for the Advancement of the Scientific Method, we have had several heated discussions on this topic. Some fellows advocate mercy killing for corrupt pseudo-scientists and their enablers in government, media, culture, and academia. Others suggest they should be used in the same way as political prisoners in China — harvest their organs for transplant. Yet others believe we should burn them for their energy, using fast pyrolysis combined with gasification.

Al Fin has gone on record stating that he cannot recommend any punishment more severe than life sentences on work gangs — similar to what one can see on the film “Cool Hand Luke.” Pseudo-scientists and their chums would be worked until they “got their minds right,” then they would be worked some more. No possibility of parole.

But they could operate their own pseudo-science journals within the camp, and conduct their own pseudo-research and pseudo-modeling in their spare time.

These cocks of the pseudo-scientific walk threaten both science, and the economies of the free world — which make modern science possible. It is time to bring them down by their own extremist lies.

The green multiculti left is working hard to bring on economic collapse and the dysgenic Idiocracy.

4 Responses to Kill Them All?

I worked as a faculty member in engineering for 37 years, 35 at a major research institute. I think my personal experiences are fairly representative of the academic work environment.

First, faculty members are not supervised in any way, and their work (other than student evaluations of teaching) does not get any significant scrutiny, Even peer review is superficial and careless. Fraud is easy to do, by and large undetectible, and when detected almost always covered up by administrators to protect the institution.

Faculty members are hired and promoted almost entirely on their ability to bring in research grant money. Almost all universities have a quota system for money much like a big law firms “billable hours,” although more real. Papers and graduate students advised to completion also count, but these are largely a product of grant money, so counting them is really double and triple counting. The source of grant money also counts, in some cases heavily. There is such a thing as dirty money and money from suspect sources. Whether this counts negatively depends upon whether someone wants to make an issue. My school got a contract from Kaddafi when he was still riding hign and killing people. No one seemed to care, including me, I was a participant. The local carryouts couldn’t tell the difference.

For 12 of my 37 years I served under department chairs who were insane. One was a paranoid schizophrenic prone to vendettas, and the other was an extreme manic-depressive who coudln’t get any work done. At least two deans chose to ignore the chairs’ obvious problems and the damage they did to the department.

My department has a number of trust funds set up by parents of students and alumni for various purposes, like scholarships and lab equipment. Disbursements are controlled by the department chair, and over the years most of the trust funds have disappeared. The scholarships are still given out, but the monies now come from department’s operating funds.

I saw one dean try to cover up two incidents of fraud. He succeeded once, punishing the faculty member who discovered the fraud, but in another case senior faculty forced him to remove the guilty party. The person punished was a junior faculty member, and the person defended was a senior faculty member. His fraud, however, was reported to the Pentagon, and an Inspector General took some mild action.

In sum, universities are like all human endeavors subject to stupidity and criminality, whic are likely the normal condition. Climate science is merely the current problem child. Max Planck is supposed to have said, “Science progresses one funeral at a time.” Yesterday’s absurd ACA ruling proves that even SCOTUS can be bought or blackmailed. That problem goes back at least to Marshall.

Yes. As bad as many of the faculties are, it is university administrations that have been growing most quickly and driving much of the rapid cost inflation and ideological indoctrination / intolerance on campuses. We are going to need a lot more guillotines! 😉

Yep. I have a friend who worked in the university and NASA R&D milieu for 15 years. He told me that it is as bad as everything you have said here, and then some. Most of it is pure fraud. He believes, as do I, that government funding of science and technology is the root of the problem and that this funding should be completely eliminated. I think he is correct.

The only way to know if a particular scientific theory is correct is if it leads to commercial technological innovation. If not, it is likely bogus.

“Lysenkoism … helped starve millions ….” to say that it helped starvation, when there were so many more obvious causes, is a pretty weak peg on which to hang an argument. The earth is warming. This is documented. The only thing that can be argued is if people are the cause. Like evolution. That species change over time is documented. The only thing that can be argued is if the evolution of species is caused by random mutation and natural selection, or by divine intervention.